Monday, November 21, 2016

Rest in Audio: Company Will Turn Your Ashes Into Vinyl

Now your friends can scratch you into the afterlife

Figuring out how you want to be memorialized after your death is often a lifelong question, some artists spend their whole lives trying to commit one act that may resonate beyond their mortal coil, yet for the deepest (and somewhat laziest) of audiophiles there is a convenient new answer: having your ashes pressed onto vinyl.

Founded in 2009 by Jason Leach, And Vinyly is a pun-obsessed UK-based service that allows customers to press their remains onto a vinyl record. What began “just for fun” is now a bustling business for Leach, as people can use the skull and crossbones mouse icon to choose from a selection of different packages.

You can get album artwork portraits by James Hague (of the National Portrait Gallery) or street artist Paul Insect (or just choose your own art). You can hire musicians through the company who will write and record a track at £500 (about $650) a pop (or maybe you want to write your own song?). And for those who have a hard time making decisions, you can have parts of your body cremated and committed to vinyl while the rest of your body is buried (but why not just have a Viking funeral and save everyone the confusion?).

Yet some do take this option more seriously than the website’s “Live on beyond the groove!” type candor. Aeon’s Hearing Madge documents one And Vinyly customer’s process of making a record of his deceased mother. It does make one think, what song would be on your death record?